


american pie

by the_names_of_those_who_love_the_lord



Category: Diary of a Wimpy Kid Series - Jeff Kinney
Genre: Gen, M/M, Suicidal Ideation, mentions of depression
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-31
Updated: 2018-01-10
Packaged: 2018-12-08 23:35:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11657016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_names_of_those_who_love_the_lord/pseuds/the_names_of_those_who_love_the_lord
Summary: Rodrick gets by on drums and hazing his little brothers and being alone in the basement while his family moves around upstairs. Sometimes you have to be thrown a life preserver before you realise you're not swimming, you're drowning.





	1. sick and tired and rock 'n roll

**Author's Note:**

> uh so did anyone else notice that Rodrick never smiles and is nobody's favourite child???? that's fucked up lads. also: because this fandom is a flaming shitpile swarming with paedophiles, I have to state that this will contain NO incest. fuck off, creeps. little kids read your shit because they ran out of stuff on ff.net. it's a disgrace.

Rodrick Heffley thought he was doing alright. As long as he didn't examine himself too closely, he could tell the guidance counsellor that everything was going okay and not feel the shame of a lie. He got by on parcelling his life into manageable chunks, which stopped him from putting all his problems together and realising that they amounted to something serious.

At school, he dealt with his worsening grades and the fact that he knew nobody with whom he could have a conversation lasting longer than two minutes. At home, he ignored how his parents only really spoke to him when he was disappointing them. At band practice, he tried to forget the feeling that all the others had A) outgrown Löded Diper and B) kind of hated him now. In bed at night, he considered how he'd somehow forgotten how to have crushes, how to be enthusiastic about other people or about any damn thing at all, how even his libido had dried up. 

He'd lace his fingers across his stomach and stare at the ceiling, awake for hours and hours, waiting for sleep that rolled him through jerky dreams. Sometimes he'd listen to Mom and Dad going to bed, quiet apart from their footsteps. Not talking. Manny waking up sometimes at three a.m., his whimpers peeping faintly down into the basement where his big brother lay listening.

At school one day, eating lunch by himself, he heard the talk coming over from the next table. Some conspiracy theorist he didn't know was expounding on a mysterious noise that popped up on sonar machines now and again. It was supposedly the call of a blue whale, but its voicebox was fucked up and no other whale would go near it. It didn't have a pod or a mate; it shouldered through the ocean alone, pushing against cold currents, not seeing any of its kind. Blue whales can live for up to one hundred and ten years, and this one had first been recorded in 1997. Thanks to the caprices of nature, its life would be a century of loneliness.

Rodrick picked at his pizza slice and thought about that wretched monster surfacing at night, with no-one to see. He thought of it opening its massive fringed mouth and filling itself up with krill, the huff and spray of its next deep breath, its slender body sliding back down, aimed like a long finger pointing into the depths. 

It would try to sing just once - a screwy attempt to ape true whalesong - and then sink, defeated, into the watery silence.

He wasn't trying to apply it to his own situation or anything. He just thought it was cool.

* * *

At band practice that night, Rodrick faced - to his own surprise - something of a mutiny.

"Listen, dude," Chris said, his bass guitar still in its bag. "We, uh, kind of don't wanna be in the band anymore."

"Wait, what?" Rodrick stared at them. "You're all leaving? That's insane."

Jack, who was on vocals, shrugged. "It's nothing personal, man. It's just....we've been doing this since we were twelve, and we're not getting anywhere. Nobody wants to book us. Not even for birthday parties."

"We can change the name," Rodrick rebutted, feeling another part of his life running through his fingers like water. "I'll let you guys pick -"

"Let it go, dude," Josh interrupted. He hadn't even brought his Ibanez with him in the first place. "I think it's time we all moved on. We've outgrown it."

"I haven't," Rodrick snapped, and was disgusted at himself for behaving like a sulky kid. But it wasn't fair. Why would no-one think of all the fun they'd had together? What was he going to do with himself now?

Chris shifted his guitar bag strap to his other shoulder. "Well, good for you, Rodrick. The rest of us have other shit to do than mess around with the reverb pedal on Josh's amp for two hours every Thursday." He paused, his expression dour. "Looks like this is goodbye."

The filed out, the other two mumbling half-hearted "bye"s. Rodrick didn't move from behind his drums. The shock of what had just happened rolled over him, and left him feeling cold in the gut. It was replaced by a slow, settling weariness.

At dinner, Dad looked up and said, "I saw your buddies leaving early."

Rodrick made noises that acknowledged this might have been the case.

Dad tried to conceal a grin, then decided he didn't care. "So, I guess that's the end of Löded Diper?"

Rodrick reached across the table and took the last chicken drumstick, ignoring Greg's sigh of annoyance. He bit into it, and with a full mouthful he replied, "Actually, I was thinking of advertising for new members. I'll put out a notice on the community board at the mall."

"Oh." His father visibly deflated. "You're not gonna let it die, huh?"

Rodrick judged that it was safe to ignore him. The sputtering flame of tiny victory warmed him, and burnt away a little of the greyness that had seemed to infest him. 

He had a plan, and that was - maybe not a start, but the confident expectation of one.

* * *

The next day, he took the bus downtown to the mall and pinned an extravagantly-lettered notice to the board near the restrooms. 

It read as follows:

ATTENTION ALL MUSICIANS

proficient players/vocalists wanted for rock/metal band

ages 14 - 20

(don't contact if you only play the drums bc we already have a guy on those)

contact Rodrick Heffley if interested

That afternoon, the phone rang. Rodrick didn't get it, thinking that it was way too soon for anyone to have seen his notice. But then his mother's voice came floating down the stairs.

"Rodrick, honey? It's for you."

He took the steps two at a time and grabbed the phone from her, muttering his thanks. He waved her away and pressed the receiver to his ear.

"Uh, hello?" he breathed, half drowning in dread, half buzzing.

A moment of delay before a young man's voice rang through: "Hi, is this Rodrick?"

"Um, yeah. Yep. That's me." Rodrick sank into the chair next to the phone table. "Are you calling about the band?"

"Sure am." The voice had a drowsy, noncholant note in it; it was the voice of a guy who took nothing seriously, in a good-natured kind of way. Rodrick's kind of person, in other words. "Listen, the name's Damien Conley. I play the electric guitar, and I sing sometimes, too. You mind if I drop over sometime and show off for you?"

"No, no, that'd be....cool." Rodrick took a breath to steady his nerves. although he couldn't rightly say why. "Are you free for today? At five o'clock, maybe?"

Damien snorted a laugh. "Hey, ain't no thing. I'll drop by."

Rodrick spat out his address, thanked him, and hung up. He sat there for a moment, staring at the phone and thinking hard. It was as though someone had sped up his thoughts, and now they where whirring all around inside his mind, scouring away the cobwebs and the ennui.

He had a start. He could feel it. He didn't know what it was the start of, exactly, but it felt good to have something.


	2. good omens

Damien showed up at five o'clock exactly. Rodrick, who'd been hovering around the door for a half-hour before that, opened the door when he saw a tall silhouette darken the frosted glass and ushered him through before anyone else in the family had time to notice the intruder. The two boys clumped down the stairs into the basement. Rodrick slammed the door behind them. He thought about locking the door, wary of Greg snooping around, but thought better of it, knowing that it was the sort of thing a serial killer would do.

He turned around, and got his first proper look at Damien.

He was tall, and rangy, with long limbs and neck and a small torso. He had a cornucopia of tiny braids, which spilled over his forehead in shaggy intricacy, and full lips, and his dark skin was very clear. He had on a shiny black jacket and pre-ripped jeans - a casual punk uniform - and a guitar in a case slung around his shoulder.

"Look, man," Damien said, shifting from foot to foot as Rodrick jittered around his drums, "can I have a little backstory here? I know you from school. Don't you already have a band?"

"Used to," Rodrick replied. He occupied himself with an old amp he'd gotten at a yard sale, getting it ready so that he wouldn't have to look at Damien. "We split up."

"Oh." Damien went quiet for a moment. "What do you want me to do? Sing? Play? I can do both, but I like playing better."

"Here," Rodrick told him, handing him the amp. "Plug yourself in and, well, show me what you got."

Damien nodded. A lazy smile spread across his face, showing off his teeth, which were snaggled and kind of jumbled up. It looked almost endearing. Rodrick twitched his face away, but he was smiling too. 

"Any requests?" Damien asked, fiddling with the switches on the amp. "I can do lots of stuff. I did this thing over the summer, best riffs from every decade, people love it."

"You perform?"

"Nah, dude, I just get asked to play for my friends sometimes." He straightened up. "Hey, can I do that piece from  _Smells Like Teen Spirit_? It's my favourite."

Rodrick waved his hand in a suit-yourself kind of way. "Sure, go ahead."

Damien pressed his fingers onto the frets and looked vaguely panicked for about two seconds. Then, he took a breath, put his right hand to the strings, and the opening notes of Kurt Cobain's best song rang out like a miracle. Rodrick rocked back on his stool, astonished. Damien grinned and settled into his performance, letting his own individuality seep in. At the part where the drums were supposed to come in, Rodrick shook himself and scrambled for his sticks, chiming in just in time with the beat. And the music flowed between them, reasonably fluid, not sounding quite like the original, but still fluent. There was something there, some current between the boys, that gave the song its unmistakeable anarchic urgency despite their small mistakes.

Damioen let it peter out once he reached the end of the riff. Although they'd barely been playing for thirty seconds, he was sweating.

"I know it's a little rough," he said, trying to catch his breath, "and I don't really know the rest of the song, and sometimes it's hard for me to reach the chords because my fingers are kinda short but I swear I'll practise and get better -"

"Dude." Rodrick pointed a drumstick at him to cut him off. "Don't worry. You're in. That was the best thirty seconds of my life." After a beat, he qualifies it: "Musically speaking."

Damien wipes the sweat off his forehead, a disbelieving grin spreading across his fine-boned face. "Really? Oh my God, dude, you will not regret this. I promise. I'm gonna work so hard at this."

"Hey, man, no need to become Eric Clapton overnight, y'know?" Rodrick levered himself out from behind the drums and stretched. "This is a garage band. Hell, not even that - a  _basement_ band. We're not exactly aiming for the Olympia."

"I don't care," Damien said. Although he was still smiling, some small fierce light shone from his eyes. "This is my craft, y'know? And yours. Even if we're not gonna headline a festival, or sell out a concert, or - or sign chicks' tits -" Rodrick smirked, because he doubted either of them would even see a chick's tits in the regular way before they died - "we should practise like we're gonna, because -"

"Boys?" Susan's voice sounding tinny at the top of the stairs. "Rodrick, where are your manners? Bring your friend up so he can see the rest of your family."

"Sure, Mom," Rodrick called up to her, suppressing a groan. He looked at Damien and mouthed, "Sorry about this." But Damien shook his head and hissed, "Are you crazy? I'd love to meet your folks!"

So upstairs they went, into the light, into the pinpointed, suspicious Heffley glare.

* * *

 "So," Frank said, obviously trying not to slip into a growl. "Damien. How'd you and Rodrick meet?"

"Well, I saw the ad he pinned to the board at the mall, sir," Damien replied, his tone easy and guileless. "I play the guitar, so I thought I'd drop by and show him what I've got. These mashed potatoes are great, Mrs. Heffley."

"Please, call me Susan," Rodrick's mother beamed. "And Frank, quit giving Rodrick's new friend the third degree. He's a nice kid! You can drop the whole 'dad' routine!" She chuckled at her husband's reddening face. Rodrick bit his tongue bloody with embarrassment. Greg's eyes snagged on his for a moment before flying back to his plate, and the message was clear: I see you dying inside, and I sympathize.

Just at that moment, Manny decided that no, he did  _not_ like stringbeans. Grabbing a fistful of them with his chubby hand, he flung them across the table with a howl of disapproval. Susan half-rose, spluttering, but Damien got there first.

"Hey, little man," he cooed, his voice creeping into a singsong lilt. "Hey, little buddy. Why don't you like your veggies? You wanna grow up big like you brothers, don'tcha?"

Manny fell silent, mystified by this friendly overture. Damien reached out, grabbed one of the stringbeans, and noodled it towards his mouth.

"Eat the worm, chickie. C'mon." Manny pursed his lips and turned his head, but he kept his eyes on the bean. "Aww, why won't my birdie eat his worms? C'mon now, duckie, eat up." Manny giggled - extraordinary to hear it, a Norman Rockwell kind of sound - and lunged for the bean, pulling it out of Damien's fingers with his teeth.

Damien snorted a delighted laugh and turned his attention back to his own dinner. It was only then that he noticed the astonished stares of the other Heffleys, and he jumped a little.

"Oh! I am - I am so sorry." He seemed to scramble for the words. "I, I have a bunch of little brothers and sisters, and I help my folks out with them....I hope I didn't -"

"It's fine," Frank interrupted. "Really. You don't have to worry, uh....Damien. We're just, well, surprised. I mean, Manny  _never_ eats his vegetables."

"Huh," Damien said, and he smiled at Manny, who was shoving the rest of his stringbeans into his mouth. "He does now."

Rodrick did a mental fistpunch. Damien had done the impossible, and it was not the feat of making Manny eat his vegetables. He had actually made Rodrick's parents  _like_ him. 

 

 

 


	3. in d major

Of course, the miracle that was Damien and the promise of hope that he embodied did not fix Rodrick's life. The next day, at school, the guidance counselor pulled him into his office for another round of What's Going On, Rodrick? 

The problem was academic. Rodrick had never been the kind of guy to stress too much over study, but lately this weird thing had been happening where he  _wanted_ to study - he had a test in the morning, his pre-calc textbook was on his desk waiting for him, every tick of the clock drove his panic level a little higher - but he couldn't look away from his phone, or from the steady backbeat he was tapping out on his drums, because /r/todayilearned and his snare were safer than the possibility (which grew more certain with each tick) that he wouldn't be good enough, that he shouldn't even try. And so he was failing algebra, pre-calc, and AP history. Hence, the unscheduled trip to the counselor's office.

Mr. Wiski spread his hands and said, "There's something wrong here, Rodrick."

Rodrick shrugged. "To be fair, sir, I've never been that great at school."

Mr. Wiski gave him one of those x-ray glares that teachers like so much. "You used to do adequately. Now you're failing out of three classes and your GPA is skyfalling." His expression changed. "Is there something going on at home, Rodrick?"

His parents didn't talk to him anymore. His brothers loathed him. He lay on his bed for hours every night, listening to the cold silence of the house. "No, sir."

"Well, I suppose your dad's stopped doing your work for you." Rodrick blushed, shrinking into himself. "Yeah, I knew about that. You're going to start applying yourself, Mr. Heffley. Run on your own steam for once." Mr. Wiski sighed and waved his hand. "Get out of here."

* * *

At lunch, Rodrick made to sit by himself, but there was a surprise for him: Damien, wearing a hoodie advertising the Dead Kennedys and grinning at him, without shame, in the middle of the cafeteria. Rodrick could not remember the last time someone had looked at him without shame.

They sat down at the table nobody else sat at, but today that was perfectly all right because today Rodrick had his guitarist sitting beside him and they were talking about music. (Rodrick liked saying  _my guitarist_ in his head - not because it made him feel like some big fuck-off exploitative Axl Rose knockoff, but because it meant he was associated with someone and not being pitied.) They got into a conversation, somehow, about Löded Diper.

"Do your parents mind?" Damien asked him, picking at his fries. "You having a band, I mean. It must get noisy."

"Yeah....well, my dad hates it, but my mom thinks it's good for me to have a hobby, so she gets him off my back about it."

"Huh." Damien raised his eyebrows, his mouth full of starch. "What kinda music does your dad like?"

"Uh....classical, mostly. Boring stuff." Rodrick found himself smothering a smile as he swiped a chicken nugget through his ketchup. "He plays it out through the window at top volume whenever highschool kids hang out on our street to drive 'em off."

A laugh burst out of Damien. "No shit?"

"No shit." Spearing a limp carrot coin on his plastic fork, Rodrick felt his good mood seep away. "He always tells me I play trash. He hates anything harder than Beethoven. Now that I've had to start over with - with the band, he might take the opportunity to uproot the whole operation entirely."

Damien stared at him, a fry hovering, forgotten, in front of his mouth. "Surely not." His expression became thoughtful; he threw the fry into his mouth and chewed on it, his bright black eyes rolled to the side. "Hold on. I have an idea."

"What is it?"

"I haven't thought it through yet." The bell rang to signal the end of the period; Damien got all his papers and wrappers together and stood up to push it into the garbage can. "Be waiting for me in the basement at six, okay? I'll be ready by then, I promise." And with that, he pushed his way out of the cafeteria, leaving Rodrick to wonder if the whole episode had been nothing but his lonely, overworked imagination trying to keep him happy.

* * *

At five to six that evening, Rodrick found himself pacing the basement, unable to sit still. His homework lay abandoned and spread around his desk and bed. He couldn't really get the math to work, and the effort had sucked something important out of him so all he could do was pace and fiddle with his phone. He hadn't yet though to get Damien's phone number, and he muttered unkind things about himself as he strode back and forth.

Then, the doorbell rang. A moment later, Susan's voice: "Oh, hey, Damien! Yeah, he's in the basement....Are you sure? He's been down there all evening, I don't think....Well, all right. Oh, and please try and keep it down. Rodrick's dad isn't too big on all that metal stuff. I like it, but....Okay, honey. Have fun. Give Rodrick my love." This last was delivered with an ironic drawl.

Damien's knockoff Doc Martens on the stairs, followed by his long legs, and finally he was all there, miraculous and grinning, in Rodrick's room. Rodrick sprang towards him, but the brutal socialization of high school kicked in and he faltered.

Damien didn't seem to mind.

"Hey, man," he said, smiling. Rodrick noticed the sheaf of sheet music in his hand; Damien followed his gaze and smiled all the wider. "Yeah, this right here is the plan I mentioned earlier on." He passed Rodrick one of the pages. "It's arranged for a full rock band, but it'll still work if he only do the guitar and drums."

Rodrick glanced at the title: 'Pachebel's Canon in D (Rock Arrangement)'. "Dude, what is this?"

"That, my friend," Damien replied, "is the most well-known piece of classical music in the world. It'd sound good if we farted it. Luckily, we have instruments, so it will sound  _fantastic._ Your dad will adore it. Trust me. What time does he get home at?"

"Um, half-six." Rodrick stared at the notes. "Damien, I don't think -"

"Hey. Hey." Damien paused midway through wrestling his guitar out of its case and pinned Rodrick with his eyes, and suddenly Rodrick could say nothing. "Listen. I know we've only just met, and I dunno if you'll even let me in the band, but we can't risk your dad breaking us up. This is the best way to bring him around to our way of seeing things." He kept staring at Rodrick, and every second of looking at those burning eyes awoke a new nerve in Rodrick's brain. "Are you with me?"

"Uhhhh....yeah. Totally."

"Good." Damien looked back down to his guitar case, leaving Rodrick reeling. "Let's get started. I've got my part down, but the drums can be tricky, and we don't have long."

* * *

Forty minutes later, Rodrick had the drum part pretty much down. He and Damien were happily working through their tenth round of playing together when the sound of the front door opening and closing came from upstairs. Rodrick thought about stopping, but the look in Damien's eyes told him to keep going. 

It was usually the case that, if Frank came home in the middle of a jamming session, he would let out an enormous sigh and loudly complain to Susan about how kids these days didn't know, or care to know, about  _real_ music. Mozart or Bach might get a mention. Perhaps Rodrick would hear himself unfavorably compared to Stravinsky, and he would grit his teeth and play on. Today, though, there was silence upstairs as Frank tried to process the music.

Susan must have come out to him, because suddenly there were two muffled voices in quiet conversation above the boys. Another few minutes of silence; then, finally, the stairs creaked as Frank Heffley willingly descended into his son's lair for the first time in three years.

"Oh, I don't mean to interrupt you," he said when they stopped. 

Rodrick shook his head. "You're not, Dad." He paused, trying to process the long-forgotten image of his father in his room. "Are we....being too loud?"

"Not at all." Frank didn't seem to know where to look. His eyes skated over the poster of Alexis Texas with her ass out on the ceiling above the bed, but such was his awe of the music that he didn't kick up a fuss. "Uh....this new direction you've taken is really....something. It's....nice."

Damien smiled. Not even a triumphant smirk - a gracious, happy smile. "Thank you sir."

Frank didn't remind Damien to call him by his first name, just to signal that he didn't totally trust him just yet. But there was definite approval when he said, "Well, keep up the good work, boys. Nice playing there, Rodrick," before he went back upstairs.

They kept practicing for another half-hour, to show that they meant it, but then Susan yelled that dinner was ready and Damien got a text from his mom summoning him home for his own dinner and they had to stop. Rodrick didn't want them to stop. The music, somehow, gave voice to the brand-new feeling in his chest. Gave it words. Made him want to say weird things about Damien's white snaggled teeth and the way his fingers slid into glissandos and his eyes, his eyes, his eyes.

Rodrick managed to get his homework done that night, plus study. And all the while a little fire crackled at the back of his head, astounding him with its resilience, when so many sparks had been trampled to death or not found kindling. And he'd smothered many other such fires, if they had happened to light - not just for boys. Rodrick didn't believe in love anymore - specifically, he didn't believe himself to be lovable. But Pachebel's Canon, and the way Damien made it ring from the strings of his guitar, had him believing. As an atheist repents on their knees before God, he believed.

 

 

 


	4. am i my brother's keeper?

The next day, at lunchtime, Rodrick clung to the walls with his tray in hand, waiting for Damien to appear and offer to sit next to him. After fifteen minutes, he was about to give up, but the boy materialized at his elbow and said, "Hey, man, how's it going?"

"Oh, hey, man," Rodrick replied, and was proud of himself for not stuttering, for not sounding surprised or grateful. He'd always been good at emotional camouflage. 

They took their seats. Damien unfolded his napkin with a little more flourish than necessary, and he didn't speak as he mowed through his peas. Rodrick chewed his pizza slice, which was mostly dough, and waited for the inevitable spanner in the works.

"I can't come out to your place tonight," Damien blurted out. "I'm grounded. I forgot to pick my sister up from school and she had to get a lift off one of her friends. My folks hit the roof."

"Ah, shit." Rodrick wanted to sink through the floor. "That is totally my fault, I shouldn't have distracted you -"

"It's cool, Heffley, it's cool," Damien sighed, waving his hand. Although his frustration was evident, there was no malice in his use of Rodrick's surname. "I gotta come straight home from school every day this week." He looked up and gave him a small smile. "But we can meet up on Friday evening, alright? I'll bring over my guitar. We can jam a little, see what we can do together."

Rodrick wanted to bite down on his fist and howl, but he stomped on the urge and raised a rictus grin of his own. "Yeah, sure, that sounds great. Really great."

* * *

 Of course, after that, he spent the rest of the day picking up a head of steam. The steam presently condensed into the toxic mixture of rage and misery that is peculiar to teenagers, complete with a playlist of self-pitying inner diatribes:  _What the hell am I gonna do now?! I can't just go home and lie there in the dark! I barely even see him at school! Oh, this is just perfect....I get one good thing, ONE GOOD THING, and it gets taken the FUCK away from me!_

By the time the last bell sounded, Rodrick was as mean as a trodden snake. He slammed the door on the van and hurtled home, coasting dangerously over the speed limit. He slammed the front door on the house, too, ignoring his mother when she heard his heavy foot steps and called, "Rodrick, honey? Is something wrong?"

That evening, Greg was acting weirder than usual. He watchd Rodrick scowling at dinner with the eyes of a wolf tracking a hobbling deer. Afterwards, Rodrick spent an hour on the family computer looking up new guitar tabs. Upon returning to his room, he spotted a pair of Keds with legs sprouting out of them jutting out from beneath his bed. Without ceremony, he reached down and pulled on them. Greg whooshed out from beneath his bed, spluttering, the previous month's issue of  _Hustler_ still clutched in his hands.

"You fucking pervert," Rodrick growled, snatching the magazine from him and tossing it onto his desk. "So you're jacking off underneath my bed now? Where I sleep? Fucking gross, Greg!"

"I'm not doing anything!" his brother protested, his neck turning red. "I was just  _looking,_ asshole!" He glared at Rodrick. "Besides, you're not  _supposed_ to have that stuff."

"Oh, shove it up your ass." Rodrick turned and took a deep breath: " _Moooaaaaahhmm!!"_

 _"_ If you tell her I was down here," Greg chirped, "I'll tell her you're looking at chauvinistic magazines _."_

Rodrick snapped his mouth shut and stared at Greg, who now wore a look of quiet triumph. Rodrick had to admit, the fallout from owning a  _Hustler_ would be magnitudes worse than that from bedroom invasion. He reached down, yanked Greg to his feet, and shoved him at the door.

"Get out."

"Not until you give me one of your magazines."

Rodrick gaped at him. "What the hell? You think this is a negotiation? Get out before I kick your ass!"

"Please," Greg persisted. There was something sincere in the tone, something that made Rodrick think Greg was in a kind of trouble that could only be resolved with the offering of pictures of Sasha Grey in a bikini. "It's....not for me."

Rodrick considered this for a moment. He went to his dresser and fished around in his underwear drawer, pulling out an ancient copy of  _Maxim._ He threw it at Greg, saying, "Here. Who's got you as his personal shopper?"

"None of your business," Greg replied. He paused for a moment, nodded his thanks, shoved the magazine up his shirt and scurried back up the stairs.

* * *

As the week went on, Greg seemed to deflate. He'd always been a flat kind of kid, physically speaking, but by Friday his usual determined stride had been reduced to a shuffle, and his eyes - normally bright with get-rich-quick schemes - had lost their lustre. Rodrick picked him up outside of school at three, and Greg huffed a huge sigh of relief upon getting into the van.

"Well, thank God  _that's_ over," he mumbled, slumping onto a rolled-up carpet. Rodrick caught his eye in the rearview mirror and furrowed his brow at him.

"What the hell are you thanking God for?"

"None of your business," Greg replied, frowning. He turned his head away. Rodrick looked at him for a moment longer before turning his attention back to the road.

When they got home, Greg made a beeline for his room. Susan clamped down her lips on the greeting she had been halfway through saying and glanced at Rodrick. "Alright, what did you do?"

Rodrick shrugged. "He was like that when he got into the van. I didn't do anything."

Susan frowned. "Did you ask him how school was? What did he say?"

Rodrick shrugged again. As an afterthought, he added, "I dunno what the significance of this is, but I found him in my room on Monday night looking for old Playboys, and I don't think they were for him."

His mother stared at him. "You've been reading Playboy behind my back?"

"Jesus, Mom, Greg's getting extorted for soft porn in middle school and that's what you focus on?"

Susan tapped him on the shoulder. "Stop that. Can you please find out what's going on with him?"

"Why me? Greg hates me."

"No, he doesn't," Susan replied. Her tone was gentle. "He trusts you more than he does me or your father, anyway. Will you do that for me, Rodrick? Please?"

Rodrick looked at his shoelaces. "Huh," he muttered. "I'll try. Can't promise anything, but....I'll try."

* * *

 "So, you think someone's bullying him?" Damien said, peering over Rodrick's shoulder at the "Sweet Child O' Mine" tab he'd printed. "What's the evidence?"

"He blackmailed me into giving him one of my old titty rags and said it wasn't for him," Rodrick replied. A couple of Damien's skinny dreads trailed across his left shoulder, and his brain's functionality was rapidly decreasing under the pleasant onslaught of the smell of coconut oil. "I believe him. Greg's basically asexual. He has no interest in anything more hardcore than that cardboard cutout of that girl at the pier."

"Is he the kind of kid that a guy could bully?"

Rodrick snorted. "Oh, yeah. Without a doubt." An uneasy feeling began to simmer at the bottom of his stomach. "Uh, he only has one friend. He literally only has one friend. Fuck." He reluctantly drew away from the intoxicating coconut fog and bit his thumbnail. "And he's been acting weird all week. Yeah, this could actually be more serious than I thought it'd be."

Damien blinked. His enormous eyes took on a thoughtful aspect. Just then, a timid little knock sounded at the top of the stairs.

"That you, Greg?" Rodrick called.

The door creaked open. Rowley Jefferson's round silhouette stood in the doorway. "Um, hey. Is Greg down here?"

Rodrick stood up. "He's not in his room?"

"No....Mrs. Heffley said she thought he was, but he's not."

Damien got off the bed. "Rowley Jefferson, right?" Rowley nodded shyly. "Listen, is Greg in any kind of trouble we should know about? Anything that'd explain why he's been acting weird all week?"

Rowley stared at Damien as though his dreads had all turned into live snakes. Then, his face crumpled, and he looked away.

"I....I think I know where he is, but we have to drive. And Frank and Susan can't know."

* * *

 It had been hard to sneak a long highschool senior and a big middleschooler out of the house, but Rodrick had managed it. He'd left a note on the fridge - BROUGHT THE BOYS OUT TO GET SNACKS. He theorized that the three of them had about half an hour before his father saw it, called bullshit, and came out looking for them. They had to find Greg and be on the way home by then. Luckily, Rowley was squealing like a punctured tire.

"This new kid came to school," he sobbed, clinging to the loop above the side door as the van bounced. "Greg slid all the way down the rope in gym class and started crying because his hands got hurt, and the guy says he took a video on his phone and that he'll put it on the internet unless Greg gets stuff for him."

"So, he's blackmailing him for porn. This kid knows so much about the internet, why doesn't he just find better stuff online for free?"

"It's - it's not just magazines," Rowley hiccuped. "Money, too. And, earlier on today? He said he'd post it tonight unless Greg snuck out and gave him his Nintendo."

Rodrick said a word he'd been saving for a suitably enraging occasion and floored it. Beside him in the passenger seat, Damien's mouth had narrowed to a line.

"Rowley, what's this kid called?" he asked, twisting around to peer into the back.

"Tommy Bianchi. He was held back two grades five years ago because he got double pneumonia. He's fifteen. He's way bigger than me and Greg."

Damien nodded, turning back to stare out the windshield. Rodrick drove on. Every now and then, Rowley murmured directions. To Rodrick's surprise, they appeared to be drawing near the nicest neighbourhood in town, where there was a golf course and a public school with a planetarium. 

"Stop!" Rowley shouted. "This is where Tommy lives."

It was a McMansion, its architechtural sins obvious even to Rodrick's untrained eye. He leaned back in his seat to try and make sense of how the roof lined up with the stuck-on columns, but his brain refused to accept it. He gave up. "Nice house."

Damien grunted. Rowley was already sliding open the door. Rodrick swung himself out of the driver's seat in the manner of the sheriff in  _No Country For Old Men,_ with his trusted guitarist loping a pace behind. He allowed himself a revenge fantasy in which he, the competent and wise elder brother, smashed the head of the bourgeois bloodsucker who had terrorized his baby brother. His chest began to puff with indignation for Greg's wounded pride. By the time his little posse reached the front door, he was ready to walk through fire, a feeling not usually associated with Greg, or anything in particular.

Damien calmly stepped ahead of him and rang the doorbell.

It was opened by a spotty, grey-eyed rake of about the same age as Rodrick. The rake's eyes swept over the three of them, and he said, "What the hell do you people want?"

"You Tommy Bianchi?" Rodrick growled.

The rake raised his eyebrows. "No, asshole, that's my brother. What's it to you?"

Damien stepped forward. "We believe your brother's extorting porn magazines and money from a kid in his class. This is his own brother. The boys are supposedly meeting up here tonight so that Tommy can get this kid's Nintendo off of him."

The rake stared at them. There was an ugly silence. Then, to the surprise of the three vigilantes, he craned his head around and roared, "TOMMY! GET YOUR SCABBY ASS DOWN HERE!"

A clumping of size-ten Nikes on the stairs, and Tommy Bianchi descended into view. 

Rodrick was taken aback by him. He'd been expecting either a bronzed, smirking demigod with perfect blond curls, or an open-mouthed lout. Tommy defied expectation, however, by virtue of being a spotty, tall, ordinary boy, whose haircut threatened accidental mullethood. He took one look at Rowley and sighed.

"I'm sorry," he mumbled. "I'll delete it."

His brother rounded on him. "Delete  _what,_ shitnose?"

"Where's Greg?" Rodrick snapped. He didn't want to witness the inevitable family ugliness; he wanted his brother, and his brother's Nintendo, back.

Tommy twisted his fingers. "He's, um, gone." He reached into the pocket of his cargo shorts and withdrew Greg's battered DS. "Here", he said, proffering it to Rodrick. "I won't do it again, I promise."

"Mom and Dad are gonna be fucking pissed," the brother growled. "A week. Is that the upper limit on how long you're able to restrain yourself from being a horror? One week?" He slammed the door in Rodrick's face without saying a word to them.

The three of them stood there for a moment, trying to process what had just happened.

"Let's go find Greg," Rowley said eventually. "It's too late for him to walk home by himself."

* * *

They found Greg trudging down a sidestreet two blocks away, his head hanging down. He didn't look up when the van pulled up alongside him; he just yanked open the sliding door so hard the vehicle teetered on its wheels and swung himself inside, slamming the door shut and plunking himself onto the floor.

He only started crying when Rodrick wordlessly passed him his Nintendo. Then some dam broke and he sobbed like a toddler, face hidden in the crook of his arm. Rowley inched across to him and rubbed his shoulder, and Damien said "You can cry it out with us, little man," in his mellow drawl, and Rodrick tried to see the road through the blur of tears.

They did end up getting snacks, after all.

 


End file.
